Miscellaneous

Miscellaneous

Why do you do all the hard work you do? Most dog pros we work with aren’t entrepreneurial by nature, and there are many other more lucrative industries. So it’s not the money. The answer seems simple, right? Generally, we’re driven by our love of dogs.
But is that enough? Do you know your mission, and the core “why” behind it? You’ve transformed your love of dogs into your life’s work, but without this clarity, you may not be achieving everything you can for dogs. And here’s another thing: Knowing your mission and core why makes your work easier, too. It makes handling decisions, dilemmas, …

Usually this time of year we share tips for getting the new year off to a great start through goal setting, time management and organization, project planning, and the like. This year we’re spending a lot of time thinking about our clients forced to rebuild their businesses (and lives) due to this past year’s natural disasters. But there are all sorts of catalysts for rebuilds.
For example, we’ve seen clients hit the restart button after a move, after dissolving a partnership, to take a next career step (such as from dog walking to dog training), to rebuild a damaged reputation, or after …

Tired of going it alone? Wish you had someone to share your struggles and triumphs? Starting a business with someone else, or adding a partner to your existing enterprise, can bring many advantages, including support, division of labor, better ideas, increased productivity, and decreased stress levels. It can also dissolve into disaster complete with tears, frustration, and ruined friendships. Over the years we’ve worked with many dog business partnerships and we’ve seen it all, from beautifully oiled partnership machines to sad disappointment to bitter drama.
Here’s some advice for …

The old song says that breaking up is hard to do. If you’ve ever had to part ways with a client, you know that it’s true. So true, in fact, that dog pros often wait far too long to let challenging clients go, choosing to live with ongoing stress rather than face the uncomfortable moment of truth. If you’re living with difficult clients (human or dog), here are some guidelines for knowing when to part ways—and how to do it.
Admitting the honeymoon is over.
Just as in a romantic relationship, you sometimes don’t know it’s a bad fit until the first argument or moment of crisis. Other times …

We all know the importance of being dog smart—of keeping up-to-date on solid, scientific knowledge of dogs and dog behavior. Not only is knowing dogs critical to our success, whether we’re training, walking, or otherwise caring for them, it’s also critical to taking responsible, professional care of these creatures we all love.
But what about the importance of business smarts? If loving and working with dogs is how you make your living (or how you dream about and plan to do so), developing business smarts is just as important. After all, without business smarts you have far fewer …

Running a small business is scary. It’s a lot of great things, too—freedom and control over your schedule, who you work with, and how you work, just to name a few. But it’s also scary. There’s a lot of uncertainty and a lot of responsibility. For most dog pros, owning a business also requires stepping outside your comfort zone. Repeatedly.
Here’s the cool thing, though: You’ve already proven your courage. You’ve already proven your ability to face down fear just by opening your dog business. If you’re reading this while still in the contemplation stage, you’re already more courageous than …

Being a dog pro is about more than understanding dogs and building the skills needed to work with them effectively and safely. Our professional knowledge and skill set are critical, but of equal importance is the ability to provide services in a professional, sustainable way. And that means holding your ground as both business owner and expert. Too often dog pros let clients take the reigns on services, policies, and scheduling. While doing so may seem like good customer service, in reality it’s bad business and rarely good for dogs.
Protecting Your Services
Be clear with yourself and your …

Pleasing an unhappy dog often comes down to simple things. Taking out a leash. Saying the word, “W-A-L-K.” Bologna. Pleasing unhappy clients, however, can prove more complicated, and even dog pros with the best customer service skills find that they can’t please all the people all the time. Here are a few steps to cut down on client complaints, and suggestions for what to do when confronted by an unhappy client.
An Ounce Or Two Of Prevention
Client complaints often result from confusion over your policies, so take preventative measures that will save you future headache:
Know your …

We're guessing since hanging up your dog pro shingle you’ve had occasion to question the “customer is always right” adage. Yet we’ve worked with enough dog pros to know that too many take good customer service a little too far—often bending over backwards for clients to the breaking point.
We understand the desire to grow your business. Making compromises on your services and policies—or letting clients dictate them—may seem like a good way to get work and cultivate client loyalty, but making too many concessions means putting the leash in your clients’ hands, and Muffy’s rhinestone collar …

Attitude is a key component of success. All the old cliches apply: Whether you approach your business goals with a can-do attitude or Eyore’s certainty of doom matters. Whether you view a class with four students as a glass-half-full victory with room for improvement or a glass-half-empty failure will make a difference in how—or whether—you take action. And business success requires strong, bold, confident action.
Success is a self-fulfilling prophecy—George Washington was fond of pointing this out—and so is failure. To some extent, your belief in your business’ outcomes will direct its …

Ugh, those seasonal ups and downs! Take the holidays, for example. For some of you—trainers in particular—they usually mean heading into a seasonal slowdown. And for others—pet sitters and boarding facilities come to mind—they mean gearing up for a big ride. Then, after the holidays, trainers get the post-holiday calls as dog guardians decide that jumping on elderly aunts is a no-no and the Christmas puppies start to seem less cute. And sitters and boarding facilities face their own post-holiday slump.
Whenever your slowdown occurs, use the time productively to lessen the impact of the next …

Failure is a part of business as much as it is a part of life. You can’t avoid it entirely, but you can use disappointments to your advantage if you’re willing to approach them differently. As Samuel Beckett once said, we need to learn to fail better.
When something doesn’t go as we hoped, it’s tempting to throw up our hands, grab at the first available explanation, and submit to defeat. But business success is partly about cultivating failures, using them to find a winning formula. How you tackle problems and disappointments will in large part determine the outcome of your business. …

If you have your own space, you know the responsibility of carrying monthly overhead and the extra chores involved in keeping a facility running. But are you making the most of it?
Brand it.
Clients having a good experience in your space is the most important thing-- that they enjoy and benefit from your classes or private training, that they feel their dog is well cared for in your daycare or boarding facility. But how your space looks will also impact their impression of you, your business, and your services.
We don’t all have budgets that allow for a state-of-the-art facility fully …

We attend a lot of professional dog conferences and seminars each year. There are so many ways to benefit: Access to the latest thinking and innovations in the field, networking and socializing with colleagues old and new, inspiration for new or improved services and revenue streams, renewed energy to keep burnout at bay. And in addition to the professional responsibility of keeping ourselves at the top of our game, every workshop is a marketing opportunity for you and your business.
It’s easier than ever to pursue professional development in our field, year round—conferences and expos, …

Most of us share the same sense of inevitable doom when we think of resolutions, whether at the New Year, or upon returning from an inspiring conference, or anytime we promise ourselves change—that brief period of determination and hope we know will give way to the reality of day to day life soon enough. What can we do to help the promises we make ourselves actually come to pass?
The key is good planning.
Assess last year.
Grab—or make—a few quiet hours to sit down and reflect.
Question your services. Ask yourself what worked well last year, and what didn’t:
How much revenue did …